


So Sorry

by cruelest_month



Series: A Sense of Loss [2]
Category: Nathan Barley (TV)
Genre: Deaf Character, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:11:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruelest_month/pseuds/cruelest_month
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at all the ways Dan failed or tried to help Jones after Jones lost his hearing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Sorry

Jones spent the first few days curled up on Dan's couch in fetal position. Dan would poke and prod until he moved around a bit. Or had some water or at least took a shower. Or made coffee or found random things to clean which was not something Dan had ever known him to do. It made him uncomfortable and he tried to keep a low profile even when they were in the same room together.

But the British Sign Language tapes arrived by Friday and Dan didn't even try arguing when Claire insisted that they try to watch them. They consisted of silent miming and pointing at charts. Jones followed along, moving his fingers and hands the way the men and women instructed. Dan made half-hearted efforts but mostly gave Claire a two-fingered salute when Jones wasn't looking.

He kept waiting for her to let him leave, but she just glared at him and encouraged Jones to continue. It worked for about half an hour until Jones caught sight of what was happening. And it probably wasn't that he minded. Jones had a better sense of humor than Claire, but maybe he thought he'd missed out on something and maybe he had. Maybe he thought they'd been talking or arguing. Maybe he missed being able to hear it.

Claire tried to write something down, but he shook his head and walked away, pulling his fingers into his chest and retreating to under his table, refusing to read her writing even when she held it out to him.

That's when Claire smacked Dan upside the head and they started fighting, but something about it was awkward. Maybe it was Jones watching them, staring at their lips and trying to make out words. Maybe it was just having no third party to interrupt or to start playing loud, obnoxious music to take some attention away from Dan. Maybe Dan just didn't have the energy to fight about anything that involved Jones. Whatever it was, he panicked and left for the night, sleeping at his desk and reluctantly coming back after Sasha had kicked him out in the morning.

He didn't have a choice. If he kept away, everything else would change too and instead of just Jones being deaf, Dan would have a whole house to himself.

*

The only positive aspect of Jones losing his hearing was that Dan could apologize and not have to deal with explaining himself. He could apologize whenever he wanted to. And he could do it as little or as often as he liked whenever Claire was out. When Jones was awake and staring listlessly up at the ceiling. When Jones fished out all the broken pieces of a cup that Dan had carelessly thrown into the sink after cutting open his finger on the shards. When Jones was sleeping. When Jones was watching those bloody tapes.

Dan loathed the tapes to the point where he spent one entire afternoon of the second week staring at the screen with a full-fledged scowl on his face the entire time Jones watched them. He picked up a few signs, but that didn’t stop Dan from hating the instructions or the instructors with their plastic untrustworthy smiles as they passed on the secrets of their strange hand nonsense.

Apparently his feelings on the matter hadn’t gone unnoticed. The next day Jones quickly shut them off when Dan came in.

Dan just watched him move under the turntable, pulling his knees up to his chest. Dan sat down on the couch, lighting a cigarette and after watching the static on the screen for a few minutes, he walked over to the table and held out the cigarette. He didn't say anything, just made a 'come on' gesture and eventually Jones did.

Once they'd finished about six more sitting there on the couch, Dan put the tape back on, and mostly just stared blankly at the screen, keeping his hands at his sides as Jones focused on mimicking everything he saw. But Dan sat there and that seemed to be good enough for Jones.

*

The music came back by the middle of the third or fourth week and it seemed so normal that the only difference Dan noticed was that it was incredibly fucking loud. Mind-altering loud. Paint peeling loud. Ear bleeding loud. Loud and awful.

He cursed loudly and told Jones to turn it down half a dozen times before he just spun Jones around and slapped him until the noise came to a halt.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” he growled out before leaning over and fiddling with the knobs when Jones didn’t move. “You can play that shit all night if you just…”

The conscience is a strange thing. Dan had been pretty sure his had disowned him years ago, but no, there it was. And it was saying: Well, fuck, Ashcroft. You just bitchslapped a cripple.

Jones just rubbed at his cheek and retreated to one of the bedrooms.

“Just keep it down,” Dan lamely and pointlessly finished before going into the kitchen.

“I don’t know what happened,” Claire said with a sad, quiet sigh that evening when she couldn’t get Jones to come out of the room. Not even for macaroni and cheese. “He was doing really well this morning. He was even playing around with his equipment when I left.”

“Really loudly,” Dan said, mentally cursing when he realized the smart thing to do would have been to lie.

“I know,” she admitted, wincing a little from the memory.

“You couldn’t tell him to knock it off?” he said testily, perfectly willing to blame her for what had happened if it made some of the guilt ebb. “You thought everyone else in the neighborhood as well as their dogs and cats would appreciate that noise?”

“You usually like that noise,” she pointed out. “You’ve been acting weird because you’ve missed that noise.”

“Not when it’s loud enough to start a level 9 earthquake in my living room I don’t.”

“I think he must find the vibrations soothing. Anyway… He seems to have stopped.”

“Yeah.”

Claire eyed him thoughtfully and stared at the ashtray on the table that was filled to the brim with cigarettes. Then the one dangling limply in his mouth. She’d emptied out the ashtray that morning and again he mentally cursed himself for not paying more attention to potentially incriminating evidence. He was looking to blame her, but she was obviously looking to blame him right back.

“I hate you,” she said, moving away from the table to reheat Jones’ plate. She hadn’t offered Dan any food and now he was positive she wouldn’t bother. “I hate you so much, Dan.”

“I know.”

“It’s not enough that he’s miserable, is it? I mean, he’s trying to get better and he finally starts doing something for himself and you… I really just hate you.”

“Yes, I’ve gathered that.”

“But it’s not enough,” she admitted as she filled up a glass of water and another with coffee before setting them down on the tray with the food. She was determined now, of course, to play nurse to the uninterested and sorely abused invalid who was probably hiding under the bed in her room. “I wish he hated you too.”

*

During the days following his return to his beloved craft of noise-making, Jones hardly left the house outside of gigs. He seemed to still manage them just fine, but once you’d done something often enough, you probably didn’t need to hear it to do it. And if he noticed that Dan went to most of them, he didn’t say anything. He also never said anything about being hit. Not even to Claire as it turned out and Dan wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse.

When he was home, Jones concentrated on the tapes or making loud sounds and putting his head to the carpet to try and catch the vibrations, which was close enough to the way things were that Dan started smoking a little less and getting some actual articles written.

“But what good is it?” Dan typed out sometime after he felt less like a bastard for smacking Jones. “You can’t hear it.”

“I feel it,” the other man insisted. “The beat’s up here,” he added, pointing to his head. “Not out there.”

“I guess you could store it up there. Not much else in it,” Dan muttered to himself before frowning and sighing. God, it was just as well that Jones couldn’t hear considering most of what Dan ended up saying to him.

Eventually he typed out "Good for you" and Jones looked dubious but he nodded anyway before wandering off to get more coffee.

When Claire was around, Dan tried to blend into the wallpaper. She kept trying to get Jones to open up about how he was adjusting. Dan didn’t know what the questions were. He just heard the answers. Yes, he was fine. No, he didn’t need to see anyone. No, he didn’t need them to do anything.

Jones asked questions too and then Dan didn’t get to hear the answers, but that was easier to figure out. It was mostly about the bills and since he had no interest in dealing with them, he’d just give Claire what she needed to do it all herself. That never stopped being embarrassing. The fact that even now with less gigs and no interest in anything at all, Jones was still capable of paying for the rent and the utilities. He never rubbed it in. Never had. Probably never would, but Dan often wished he had the ability to be successful without effort. Then he wouldn’t have minded it.

*

Nights were a different and stranger story.

Initially, Dan reacted badly to Jones constantly wanting to sleep with him. The first few times, he shoved out of instinct and felt vaguely like the absolute shithead Claire so often accused him of being when Jones made a soft sound that sounded almost like a yelp and caught himself before falling off the couch or bed.

And he’d leave then. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t mention it the next day.

It took a long time, but after Jones stopped trying and things had started going back to something like normal, Dan started to wonder where Jones went and followed after him, making no effort to be all that stealthy because it wasn’t like the DJ could hear him. Jones apparently decided the safest thing to do was curl up at the end of Claire’s bed. Probably to avoid a similar sort of rejection.

“It’s not my problem,” Dan told himself and he went back to the couch in the living room. But when he sat down, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to sleep soundly. He kept thinking about the next room with Claire oblivious to it all and Jones curling in on himself on the end of the bed. He’d leave before she woke up and he just wouldn’t say anything.

Even when the house was quiet, Dan could hear noises. When he wandered back down the hall, he could hear breathing and he could see the rise and fall of Jones’ chest.

Even when he wasn’t thinking or interested in background noise, Dan could hear sounds. Something faintly ticking in the room he’d just left. The low hum of the pathetic dishwasher in the kitchen. A car driving past the front of the house. A bug somewhere chirping. He could hear so many pointless things.

He woke up the next day to Claire shoving his shoulder and demanding to know why he was sleeping propped up against the wall to her room. He just muttered something and headed off to work.

The next night, there was a brutal rainstorm with thunder and lightening. Claire was at Nathan’s and Jones was fidgeting on the couch. It couldn’t have been from having one cup of coffee. Dan peered at him over the edge of his laptop. Eventually he saw what was happening. The flashes of light made Jones jump, but the rest of it was lost on him.

Dan went back to writing his article and about an hour later, he looked up to see Jones wasn’t there. Jones wasn’t in the kitchen either. He was in Claire’s room on the end of her bed and Dan cursed quietly before deciding he’d had just about enough of this. He nudged Jones gently until his blue eyes opened and then Dan picked him up.

There was no point saying anything and Jones didn’t say anything either. He just rested his head against Dan’s shoulder and looked up at him uncertainly.

Once they got to Jones’ room, Dan put him down on the bed, kicking off his sneakers before getting into it. He stared at the other man for a few seconds before grimacing and making the sign for ‘sleep.’ And another for ‘brat.’

Jones smiled, laughed and touched his cheek before closing his eyes.

Later on he told Dan that the first sign have been right but the second one had actually been ‘baby.’ Dan started paying slightly more attention to the BSL tapes after that and got used to having to sleep with Jones at night. It wasn’t like anyone else wanted him in their bed and it actually helped Dan to sleep better too, but he never would have admitted it.

*

There were so many easy ways to say that you were sorry when no one could hear you admit that you were wrong and that you knew it.

“I wish I could still hear you,” Jones said one day shortly after Dan had apologized for the umpteenth time and momentarily he was afraid he’d been found out. But the other man was staring down at the pieces of a toy replica of a sonic screwdriver and only looked up after he’d finished his own confession.

There were dark black-blue smudges under his eyes. Maybe he wasn’t sleeping as well as Dan had thought.

“You never said much but…”

Dan cleared his throat and nodded.

“I’m fine, really,” Jones continued. “I am. But I miss… I miss so many things.”

‘I know,’ Dan signed and if anything, signing was much easier than talking would have been.

Jones managed a feeble smile and Dan returned it.

‘Cigarette?’

He set his tools down and rocked back on his heels briefly before moving away from the turntable. “Actually, I had some other thoughts. About cheering me up.”

‘Like…what?’

Jones grinned and headed off towards the other rooms of the house.

It took Dan the better part of his article to figure out what Jones meant and only then it was after Jones had come back and motioned for him to follow. After sighing, Dan got up to join him.

“You’re getting much better at signing,” Jones said with an encouraging smile as he sat down on the end of the bed and worked on unzipping Dan’s jeans.

He slid down to the floor after stroking him and then began sucking expertly with an enthusiasm that confused but ultimately pleased Dan. Or at least aroused him.

Dan ran a hand through Jones’ hair and groaned, closing his eyes. “Not the one who needs to use signs,” he muttered. But maybe, just maybe, they both did.


End file.
